I won’t bore you with bio-diversity figures, but it’s safe to say Borneo is the stuff of the legendary David Attenborough’s wet dreams. Malaysian Borneo is also an easy place to visit, free from the hassle-factor so ubiquitous in other South East Asian places. People used to high class accommodation might balk, but for me staying in places with no air-conditioning and no hot water didn’t

About camping: as soon as the sun rises, you're slowly roasted awake. Or maybe that's just our tent. Anyway, come 7.30am I was battling for air, and decided to emerge into the dewy morn. The inflatable mattress had bestowed an unexpected pleasure by retaining its air through the night, and so as I boinged out into the open I felt strangely refreshed.As part of the no-plan plan, Cowboy had

If you believe the available information in the vicinity of Noosa (most notably the marketing pamphlets of the myriad whale-watching companies), it is an hour and three quarter drive to Hervey Bay. In reality, it is more like two and a half hours. We found this out the hard way, after much cursing and expensive overseas cell-phone "We're almost there, I promise. Can you hold the boat?" pleas.

Two words: Mrs. G. I think this was perhaps supposed to be a Sunday thing, but because we're in the future here in New Zealand, I didn't figure that out until the clock had struck 13.The alarm goes off at 6.58am, but it would be too cruel to subject both of us to an image of that, so we'll pretend that the actual getting-out-of-bed proceeded smoothly and without delay, and skip straight to ....

There is a kind of healthy disdain between the nations of Australia and New Zealand. When asked, most Kiwis will respond that they like Australians, as long as they stay in Australia. Unless there is a sporting event between the two national teams. At that point, civil behaviour is dismantled before your eyes and cutlasses are brandished. Only yesterday, a colleague was relaying a tale of

Can you feel it coming? Personally, I was excited enough at the giant Red Kangaroo I saw in a field on the drive from the airport, where we landed at 8.30am. But I have been persuaded that unless I do this, I will regret it forever. I've been awake since 4am, so I'm more malleable than usual. My wallet is creaking open... I am extracting Crikey! $104 Australian Dollars, and handing them to a

If it hadn't been for Pear Tree Cottage, we might have had a very disappointing couple of days in Queenstown. The time we spent wandering around town was time spent being irritated by people whose sole reason for being in town was to be seen. Queenstown has morphed into something that seems spectacularly un-Kiwi. It wasn't like this when we first visited three years ago, but it is now the New

You would be forgiven for thinking that this blog should be entitled 'Boring Trivial Life of A Beige Person', so sparse and dull has the posting been of late.  Indeed, I have wondered myself what on earth my life is coming to.  I have moved from London to New Zealand and recently, it seems the only thing that's changed is that I'm prohibitively distant from my family and old friends.Of course

The Cook Strait is the body of water lying between the North Island and South Island of New Zealand. It is legendary for its temperamental behaviour, choppy conditions, and ripping currents. Consequently, you might think that a three-hour ferry ride across it might not be a great idea. Some days, you'd be right: On other days, it is spectacular. We were particularly lucky: in the space of

I tried to write this post yesterday, but I forgot that my brother was turned loose on the computer in order to organise and conglomerate the several hundred photographs we ended up with after the trip. For reasons known only to himself, he set about deleting the photographs he didn't like. Presumably he concluded that some of them were pointless because he has not heard of autostitch, or of

Cowboy was outside, washing Carlo, when he yelled through the door something about hogwash before disappearing.I went out there to remonstrate yet again regarding his irritating habit of yelling something incomprehensible and then wandering off. I found him peering down into the gutter next to the wheel of the car."What?" I said."Want to see a hedgehog?" he replied.We all know that there's

I have been living for the Christmas break for the last two months. Ever since I started a real job, which involves 45 hours a week of non-sofa time, and had to think up unsuccessful strategies to find the time to do the things I used to take for granted, I feel like I have been constantly on the back foot. Teetering on the brink.For me, a break means slobbing about the house, reading and being

This afternoon I was half way through the weekly food shop and wondering if Cowboy would return from his trip to the recycling centre in time to help me through the checkout, when over the radio* in the supermarket I heard the newscaster announce that a humpback whale had just been sighted "rolling around and having some fun" about 100 metres off the coast near the Fort.I sped up the shopping

After years of fruitless searching, I have finally procured the perfect pair of boots:I have carried the mental image of the perfect pair of boots around in my head for so long that the boots became like the Holy Grail. No shop had something that fit the bill. Oh, bits would be satisfactory, like the colour. But there would always be a glaring departure from the image: a four-inch

As I was driving to the gym in the swiftly-darkening evening yesterday, my route took me down a relatively busy, but wide, boulevard-type street. I was bimbling along, singing aloud to Antony & The Johnsons, when the headlights illuminated something white slightly to the right of my path, next to a traffic island.I slowed, and it became apparent that the white thing was actually black and white,

...that a seagull has an in-built need to dampen its bum every so often? Next time you're at the beach, keep a close eye on the gulls. If they aren't noisily asserting their right to your sandwich, they will likely be standing beside a calm area of water. Every so often they will amble over and dip their arse lightly into the water for a moment, as though extinguishing a gently smouldering

Cave Weta, photographed by the author a few weeks ago in a pitch-black cave three feet wide and six feet tall, lit by a lone torch. I wish I had the words to describe the scene when the flash went off. I was sharply reminded of that scene in Aliens. "Can't be. That's inside the room!" This recent immigrant observes that life as a stranger in a foreign land results in emotions which lurch

When I think of pest animals, I envisage tiny blackened tube mice (the Londoners among you will realise to what I am referring), cockroaches, and nasty London two foot long sewer rats. I can stretch the definition of pest to include to the urban fox, but that's pushing it, because foxes are cute. When I think 'pest', I do not think of enormous eyes and nice clean fur:You see alot of possum

Every so often I check my blogular inbox (and by every so often, I mean whenever I remember that it exists - which at the moment ranges from once a week, to every three days). The other day I was pleased to find that a (concerned?) reader had emailed a link to a rather amusing news report which I feel compelled to share, weeks late, with you dear readers.Ban on feeding cows dope

Recently, Cowboy has been suffering strange insomnia which causes him to wake in a froth at 4am. Usually I can sleep through his huffing and puffing, but this morning I woke up as he was getting up to go downstairs at 4am, and then again at 5am, when I realised he hadn't migrated back under the covers.This being unusual, I decided to get up and check he was OK. I found him downstairs reading "